A Cheboygan man is facing charges of second-degree aggravated robbery and making terroristic threats in connection with an incident Saturday when he allegedly tried to rob a bank in Minnesota.

By MIKE FORNES and Richard CroftonTribune Staff

A Cheboygan man is facing charges of second-degree aggravated robbery and making terroristic threats in connection with an incident Saturday when he allegedly tried to rob a bank in Minnesota.David Michael Tyler, 65, put on a fake beard and dark-tinted glasses and walked into the US Bank in Stillwater, Minn., set a black briefcase down on a desk — and passed an employee a note stating, “It’s going to be a real good day or a real bad day,” according to court records filed Monday in Washington County (Minn.) District Court. Then he allegedly opened the briefcase, and revealed a note that read, “enough explosives to level the entire block.”Tyler is said to have told police that he planned the robbery for about a week and made his fake “bomb” at his apartment in Cheboygan. On Tuesday, the Cheboygan Department of Public Safety, along with the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad and the bomb sniffing dog from St. Ignace, investigated Tyler’s residence on Main Street in Cheboygan.“We had to work with the FBI and the authorities in Minnesota,” Director of Public Safety Kurt Jones told Cheboygan City Council. “We searched the residence to make sure there were no explosives in there and to secure the area for the rest of the residents and the other tenant in the building. It was just precautionary.”The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported in a story published Monday Tyler told police he is a “career criminal” who owes $90,000 in child-support payments and “felt he had no option but to rob a bank.”A check of Cheboygan County jail records showed that Tyler had not been involved with police here “at least back to 2003,” said Detective/Lt. Tim Cook. Tyler told police in Minnesota he served time for bank robbery and kidnapping incidents during the mid-1970s. He stated that he was released from prison in 1995. Those events took place in California.The Minnesota newspaper’s account of the incident states that the incident disrupted business in downtown Stillwater on what should have been a busy weekend when authorities closed everything within a two-block radius around the bank.Tyler stated that he wrote the note demanding $200,000 in cash last week at the Cheboygan Area Public Library. Tuesday, Library Director Mark Bronson and two front desk employees were shown Tyler’s photograph but said they did not recall seeing him at the library.“If he was here, he didn’t cause any trouble or give anyone reason to notice him,” Bronson said.The complaint states that Tyler drove to Duluth, Minn., and Forest Lake, Minn., but “could not find a bank he was comfortable with,” and began scouting banks in the Stillwater area. While there, he also bought a beard-and-mustache kit. After showing a briefcase that he said contained a bomb, he allegedly told bank employees to stuff a backpack full of money. Before fleeing the scene on foot, Tyler pushed a button on his cell phone and told the bank employees he had just activated the bomb, the complaint states, and that it would detonate in 10 minutes. Police arrested Tyler while he was running to a truck he parked nearby and had $3,726 in his backpack, handed over by the teller. The briefcase did not contain an explosive device, police said. The incident remains under investigation by Stillwater Police and the FBI.